


effeuiller la marguerite

by neveroffanon



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Gen, i think this is my first brightwell fic, its just as understated as what we get fed in the show- sorry?, malcolm's feverish dissertation on jello and dani's face inspired this, occurs right at start of PS 1.12 Internal Affairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveroffanon/pseuds/neveroffanon
Summary: A peek in Malcolm’s head after he’s finally cleared to leave the hospital and return home.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Jessica Whitly, Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	effeuiller la marguerite

Does she like me? Or this another one of Ainsley’s friends or Mother’s fourth cousin twice removed sons and daughters who are come to place nice with the village idiot, type of situations? Make him feel, if not ordinary, because that’s obviously not what he is, then something approaching normal. He settles into bantering with Mother about her latest hire for just a moment, and then allows himself to be drawn away by the, frankly benign looking when compared to earlier nursemaids, judo champion. He asks Ilsa to tell him about judo, as she helps him lay down. While he goes through the motions of submitting to his new caretaker, he’s listening with half an ear to Mother and Dani discussing how poorly he’s doing. He sighs, scratches that thought out as unfair. Dani tends to rely on her police training when faced with uncomfortable personal situations, and now is no different. She’s polite, distant, and firm— not confirming or denying that they’re friends, tentatively, and certainly not hinting whether they’re close.  
  
Things had been off. After the hospital stay, which he couldn’t remember much of, and the parts he could remember were sick with the smell of disinfectant and his own blood, jagged sharp with the pain in his hand and side. The team had visited, but Mother had been decamped at his side like an auburn haired martinet, and as much as they might’ve wished to stay, Mother had hoved too protectively close, and, too, the doctors prescribed rest. In a word, isolation, had haunted him from Christmas until long after New Years. At some point, he’d wondered, the longer he stayed in the hospital, was it even a good idea to return to work.   
  
They might look at him and see what he could do, not who he strives to be. That is the danger of it—giving in and using what Mother and Gil and Jackie and his teachers at Quantico drilled into him. Violence as a means to an end, especially if that end is selfish, makes him ill. It is half the reason he never eats during a case, not if he can help it. Looking at the victims and how they’d been wronged never sits well. Although, jello is safe, usually. Always excluding the terrible, almost salty stuff they serve in the hospitals.   
  
“The hot toddy,” Ilsa announces, and he sits up to take the cup and draw on a smile for her. She smiles back, obviously happy at how complacent he is, and minces back toward the kitchen. Dani is whispering something now; she and Mother too far for his ears to pick up. He wants to roll out of bed and dance up to her the way he had the last time she’d come up. Mother’s presence makes that an awkward idea, and the excuse of last time to bring her close is glaringly absent. But something’s needed to break the wall of professionalism that’s grown between them since Colette and Watkins and weeks spent in a hospital bed. He wants to hear her say, like she had before he’d run off and gotten kidnapped, that he can be fixed. It’s not even the words that are important— Gabrielle’s been saying them for twenty years. The way she’d said them, that stuck in his mind.  
  
Even so, when Dani puts on her professional voice and utters the word _homicide_ , he thinks that there are more than a few words he wants to hear her say. She leaves, after reciting the address at full volume, and he grins. Reading into that would be the height of stupidity, but since she, and all the rest of the team, will be there, he may as well distract himself from the question he doesn’t yet know how to ask her.


End file.
